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“I’m in heaven,” Shane said.
“I’ll get you some more.” She signaled the gaucho.
“Well, they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Abigail said. Her coaster was still green. Shane had always admired her appetite, both in and out of the bedroom.
Pork ribs followed, then pork loin, and by the time round two came around, Shane flipped his side over to red. Abigail gave him a triumphant look and accepted another slice of the picanha. There would have been a time when he would have flipped the coaster back to green just so she wouldn’t win. But he was no longer competing with her, and, damn, but it felt great.
The only thing better was if he could have shared this experience with Reba. He wondered if she preferred the picanha over the fraldinha, or how she would drink her caipirinha. He should have taken a picture and texted her it, but that just wasn’t him. Shane watched as Becky and Wendy took shots for Instagram and shook his head. He wasn’t even on social media. He thought his brother might have set Viking Ranch up on there, but he’d never bothered to check.
“You never said what you did for a living,” Becky said, having long since turned her coaster to the red side.
“I work on my family’s ranch. We’re bull breeders.”
“Oh,” Wendy said, her eyes sparkling. “Those dangerous beasts are yours?”
“Some of them, yeah.”
“That Sverre is a bastard,” Keith said, sneering.
Every bull rider at the table agreed.
“He is indeed.” Shane raised his glass to toast his bull, but no one took him up on it. He drank anyway.
“I’m going to be the first to go eight seconds on him,” Keith said.
“Of course, you will,” Abigail purred, putting her hand on his forearm. She still wore her candy apple red nails long. This time, she had put sparkling gems on them that caught the candlelight of the restaurant.
“Good luck,” Shane said, even though he didn’t mean it.
“His price goes down when I do, right?” Keith said.
“Not by much.” Shane shrugged. “If it goes down too much, there’s always other rodeo organizations.”
Abigail leaned forward. “So you’re not on an exclusive contract with UPRC?”
He couldn’t let Abigail know how much this line of conversation interested him. “Not yet,” he said.
“Anyone ready for dessert?” the waitress asked.
There were satisfied groans at the table, but Abigail glared up at the woman. She didn’t like to be interrupted.
“I’ll have the tres leche cake,” Shane said.
“Same,” Abigail snapped out.
The bull riders opted out of dessert and ordered more drinks for them and their ladies instead.
“It must be important for you that the bulls toss us off more often than not,” Nash said.
Shane wondered what Nash was getting at. It was asked casually, without anger, but he sensed that his answer would be important to Nash for some reason. “I’ve been where you are,” he said. “No one wants to ride a tame bull. You wouldn’t be in this sport if you didn’t like the challenge of pitting yourself against two thousand pounds of rage. But if you go eight seconds on Sverre and break his streak, good for you. I’ve got five other bulls coming up in the next year that will give you a run for your money.”
“But Sverre can’t command the same price once he’s been ridden for eight seconds,” Abigail pointed out.
“Depends,” Shane said. “There are plenty of championship bulls that command a great price and they’ve all been ridden for eight seconds.”
“That’s the key, though,” Nash said slowly. “You’ve got to give the cowboys a good ride and you have to give the crowd a good show.”
“That’s the name of the game,” Shane said. It was a strange line of questioning that Nash was following. A bull rider knew these things. Maybe he was showing off for the ladies?
